The Halls of Glory – VivaFnatic

As the war for Montel rages on, there are those few who stand out, for domination or defiance, for ferocity or nobility, for victory or defeat. In our recurring segment covering the interesting players of our community, we accept a new entrant into the BGO Halls of Glory – VivaFnatic.

We talked with VivaFnatic (we’ll call him Viva for short) to learn a bit about his gaming experience, and how that’s played out in the land of Montel. Viva told us he’s no rookie when it comes to gaming:

I started playing the oldskool counterstrike 1.5 and 1.6 back in the day. Late 2001 I got offered a spot in pro team Fnatic to play along with popular gamers such as xPeke. My original gaming name was Viva, so I chose the combination “VivaFnatic”, which I now use in every single game.

Viva proved to be no slouch when it came to the nitty gritty details of character construction. Coming into BGO just over a month ago, he decided after consulting forums to pick a class he didn’t see many others choosing: the Pyromancer. In the end he went with a Male Kosh Pyro, because as he puts it: “[in choosing Kosh] I figured the 20% critical [race stat] would be the end game stat that would make me better than others. Being married to my wife for 6 years, it’s still a little awkward to pick a girl character with double D’s, haha, so I picked male.”

When asked to describe his build, he had a lot to say about the evolution of a character build. Ultimately, Viva found that the ideal build really did vary based on the strength of his particular skills – with more options opening after the new Skill Surge system opened – and also in response to the choices of other players.

Initially, I followed the in-game advice and that of my fellow player Saeya to build up my Intelligence to strengthen skills like Firewall. However, I soon realized that some of my other skills could be really boosted up with Spell Power; in particular, Spell Power had a big impact on burst damage, as opposed to the handful of continuous burn attacks that Intelligence helped with.

With that realization, I rerolled my Pyromancer to focus on Spell Attack and Crit Damage. One of my best skills after that change was the Ion Beam, which I also beefed up my electric skills, so that I could mix stuns with burst damage to deal some heavy damage. This had a big impact on my PvE and PvP presence.

However, I noticed a lot of players started rolling Crit Resistance. With my Kosh racial stats and maxed Crit, I was still had an above average Crit rate, and my damage output was nothing to shrug off at around 40k, but I started to check out other skills like Convection Blast, Bolt Spear and Neuroblast – all of which stack well with newly surged Fan the Flames.

So now, I’m looking to reroll back to Intelligence to build up these other skills. I’m also trying to build up my sustain, which will be helped when I get some new healing and shield skills at my next Surge level. For my gear, I’ve got armor and magic resist capped. Since you can’t put the same color gems on the same gear, I try to diversify so I can get the most out of them. At this point, I basically have 2 skill bars: one for PvP and one for PvE.

In the land of Montel, where PvE and PvP formed to equally important halves to a single progression whole, Viva shows how flexibility and adaptability can play a big role in success, especially as trends form among opponents in PvP.

And clearly something is working, as VivaFnatic is one of the highest ranked players for Might Score in the Lokemean server. The key to this customization strategy seems to be in Gems, which Viva has spent no shortage of time, and as he honestly claims money, to develop.

We asked Viva a bit about how he spends his time in-game. He had this to say:

As a European, I have different play hours but I'm the kind of person that doesn’t need more then 3-4 hrs sleep, so I start up with all the solo quests (dailies, adventures, etc.) before others come on line, and then do some raids and PvP once they get online. Doesn't work out every day because I do have a job & a wife. With my career, computers are pretty much my life, so I’m pretty much multi-tasking as soon as I wake up to the point where I fall back asleep.

And who are the “others” that VivaFnatic plays with?

I started playing with Doomsday when I first got into it, where Chaos showed me the basics and I also met a lot of the other players who went over to Divine with me. I’ve got a friend who I’ve been playing with for almost 8 years who joined the game with me, sdaberrella (currently n 2 of Lokemea).

We kind of wanted to “play soldier” in Black Gold, because we’ve usually been leaders in guilds. We managed to do that for a bit, but eventually sdaberrella became an officer and I became Divine’s second, so there goes that soldier dream. Either way, we’ve been having fun getting to know other players through Teamspeak.

As an important member of a powerful Guild, VivFnatic no doubt fights his fair share of PvP. We were curious to hear what type of Battle Carriers he has. Simply put: all of them. Or near enough to be close, with 5 slots completely filled with Tier 7 Battle Carriers.

In terms of my favorites, I would go for the Storm Soarer (Aerial) and the Wyrm Homodont (Raid).

Storm Soarer because of the huge electric splash dmg that actually 2 shots carriers in BFC while being able to kill anti-airs as well.

Homodont for the huge leap attack once its T7. It can really mess footmen up in no time. But I really like all the carriers, so unique concept and so wonderful creatures.

After a month in the game, we wanted to know if VivaFnatic had any good stories to share. He had three for us:

My first memorable moment was a bit of respect we received from the opposing faction, most notably Legends. We were trying to run Caravan, which is a must for lower geared players, and can sometimes be unfair when we’re outnumbered 3:1 by high geared players. However the other faction saw the imbalance and let us finish them, and it showed that in the community sometimes respect is worth more than honor (the PK honor, that is).

As second story, I recently was in a BFC 1 v 11 – that’s me alone – and I somehow managed to keep mid flag for 20 minutes before losing it for 5. Then, suddenly my leader and good friend ToDaFace – who has also been featured in the Halls of Glory – showed up and the two of us took the middle for a win. I ended up with a stunning 64-0 score and capped honor instantly, haha.

And third but not last was one of my server firsts. After opening a LOT of mount treasure boxes, I finally received a nice looking Serrawyrm flying mount.

After all of this, we wanted to know: What’s your favorite part of BGO?

The coordinated team play during PVP battles is what I like the most. That's why I always pick the underdog side when I register at a certain game. Goals are harder to achieve yet giving a much better feeling when you finish them, which leads to a higher dedication & motivation. And that is needed to enjoy a game to the fullest & thanks once again legends & rest of Isenhorst to provide us with that possibility.

If you think you have a cool character build or an interesting story, you may be the next entrant into the BGO Halls of Glory! Contact our community team at BGOfans@snailgamesusa.com, we’ll consider your for our on-going coverage the players of Black Gold Online.